Why is RUBS Bad for Tenants?

1. You have no control over how high your utilities fees are! If you’re out of town for three weeks and use much less water, your costs don’t go down.

2. Charges can vary a lot from month to month, making budgeting & planning very difficult, possibly increasing more than allowed by rent control.

3. You can’t access utility assistance programs that you might otherwise qualify for. (The City has a program to reduce utilities costs for low-income tenants - but only if you have your own contract with them.)

4. If your landlord is slow to fill vacant units, your costs go up–the total building utilities usage is divided among fewer tenants.


Ratio Utility Billing System (RUBS) is a way landlords redefine utility billing to offload more costs onto tenants. It unclear exactly what is being paid for and causes utility billing to sometimes increase up to 8x! ($50 / month -> $300-400 / month).

We want to guarantee no more of our neighbors are kicked out of their home due to a utility bill increase scam.

While RUBS is banned in other states, it is clear that these massive utility bill increases fall within a legal loophole of the new Washington rent stabilization laws and are being used to squeeze more money out of tenants with nothing in return.

Tenants have an opportunity to drive RUBS out of our buildings AND out of Seattle as a whole.

The Los Angeles Tenant Union and the Debt Collective in LA are engaged in a campaign to BAN RUBS in LA. They are larger organizations and have offered to provide us support in any way they can. That includes media coverage and on-the-ground organizer advice (such as the meeting we had last weekend with the Virgil Square Tenants who are currently on a rent strike against RUBS). They are on track to ban RUBS in their city and we can get it banned in ours too.

Read more in our Op-Ed -> It’s Time to Ban Ratio Utility Billing